Manufacture of springs.



Patented Dec. 23, I902;

F. H.,DANIELS, 6. S. MARSHALL 8. J.'U. E. TROTZ.

MANUFACTURE OF SPRINGS.

(Application filed Feb. 10, 1902.)

3 Sheets-Sheet L (No Model.)

' COILER P08 HE R COILER Tm: mmms PETER! 00.. PuoTouTwa; wasmuamu, D. c,

No. 7l6,679. Patented Dec. 23, i902. F. u. DANIELS, c. s. MARSHALL & J.0. E. TROTZ. MANUFACTURE 0F SPRINGS.

(Application filed Feb. 10, 1902.)

(No Max lei. 3 Sheets-Sheet 2.

m: mama Farms 00.. Puma-unit! wmmsrom I c. w

Patented Dec. 23 i902.

, F. H. DANELS, C. S. MARSHALL & J. 0. TROTZ.

MANUFACTURE OF SPRINGS.

[Application filed Feb. 10, 1902) 3 Sheets-Sheet 3.

(No Medal.)

wowM m.

Ni'rEn STATES PATENT OFFICE.

FRED H. DANIELS, CLINTON S. MARSHALL, AND JOHAN O. E. TROTZ, OFVVOROESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, ASSIGNORS TO AMERICAN STEEL 82; WIRE COMPANY,A CORPORATION OF NEW JERSEY.

MANUFACTURE OF SPRINGS.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 71 6,679, datedDecember 23, 1902.

Application filed February 10, 1902. Serial No. 93,445. (No model.)

To all whom, it may concern Be it known that we, FRED H. DANIELS andCLINTON S. MARSHALL, citizens of the United States, and JOHAN 0. E.TBOTZ, a subject of the King of Sweden and Norway, all residing atWorcester, county of Worcester, and State of Massachusetts, haveinvented certain new and useful Improvements in the Manufacture ofSprings; and we do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, andexact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilledin the art to which it appertains to make and use the same.

This invention has to do more especially with the manufacture ofcoil-springs of the compression type, and particularly withthe heaviervarieties of springs that are intended for railroad-cars and aredesigned to be set up endwise on flat seats or surfaces provided forthem in the trucks and to support the weight ofthe car-bodies on theirupper ends. The method usually employed for making such springs is totake pieces of rod or wire of a length just sufficient to make onespring each and after beveling or chamtering the ends so that they willpresent fiat surfaces when the spring is completed to reheat the piecesto the proper heat in a furnace, whence they are withdrawn by hand andfed into a coilingmachine. This is a comparatively slow and expensiveprocess, particularly as the beveling of the ends of the rod or wirelengths requires a special machine for that purpose and also becauseeven with such machines it is difficult to obtain a taper on the endsthat will furnish a sufficient area and character of surface to form agood flat seat.

The present invention dispenses altogether with the necessity of anypreliminary treatment of the rods or wires to form these fiat ends andbesides dispensing with the special machine for beveling the ends may doaway also with the reheating of the rods or wires before coiling. Therod or wire as it comes from the rolls depends for itshardness upon ahigher or lower temperature. When of a higher temperature, it willstandboth the coiling and sawingwithout reheating. When of a lowertemperature, it will be necessary to reheat before sawing. Incidentally,also,

the springs are made in sets, and a single operation squares the ends ofa pair of springs simultaneously. Instead of cutting up the rods or wireinto short lengths appropriate for single springs we feed the materialin full 5 5 lengths from the mill-rolls directly to the coiler and windthe whole length of rod or wire into a continuous coil, which isafterward cut up into shorter lengths to form the springs. At the pointswhere this long coil is to be severed into individual springs the pitchof the windings or couvolutions is reduced, so as to close the coilstogether tightly, and something more than a complete turn is given inthis way, after which and without discontinuing the windings theoriginal pitch of the convolutions is restored and the winding continuedwith open coils again until the next point is reached where the coil isto be severed. The rod or wire as it comes from the rolls is, as will bereadily understood by those skilled in the art, at about a red heat. Asthe coiling proceeds, however, it cools, and by the time the coil iscompleted it is too cold to realize the best results by cutting in themanner contemplated by our invention. The entire coil is thereforepreferablypassed from the coiler into a furnace, where it is heatedsomewhat above what is known inthe art as a good hardening heat. Theobject of heating the coil at this stage of the process is twofoldviz.,first, to bring the metal up to the proper temperature for thehardening-bath after being severed, and, second, and more especially, toenable it to 8 be severed by sawing across at the points where thewindings or convolutions are closed so as to make a clean cut and leavea fiat smooth surface that will not require the careful finishing thatwould be necessary were the sawing done without heating the coil. Fromthe furnace the coil is passed in front of a metal-sawing machine andout up into shorter lengths, as before described, preferably bya rotarysaw revolving at high speed. 5 This method of severing the coil is themost important feature of the invention, for the reason, among others,that it cuts clear across the coil in a plane at right angles to theaxis of the coil itself, thereby cutting the metal on a line that isoblique to the length of the strand of wire or rod composing the coilinstead of on a lineperpendicular to the direction of the convolution orwinding, or, in other words, the out is made with respect to thecompleted coil and not with respect to the rod or wire composing thecoil and is, as stated, perpendicular or at right angles to the axis ofthe coil and oblique to the axis of the individual strand of rod or wirein the coil. After leaving the sawing-machine the springs are completedso far as the salient feature of the present invention is concerned, andthey are then conducted to the oiltank, Where they are immersed in thehardening-bath in the usual manner, after which they are tempered and,if desired,

japanned, all in a manner now wellunderstood and with which ourinvention has no particular concern.

In the accompanying drawings, forming part of this specification, anapparatus for carrying out the above-described method is illustrated.

Figure 1 shows in a diagrammatic way a plan of the entire apparatus.Fig.-2 is a vertical section of the furnace. Fig. 3 is a plan View ofthe machine for coiling the rods or wire in the manner alreadydescribed. Fig. 4 is a side View of the coiling-machine. Fig. 5 is adetail of the particular part of the machine for causing theintermittent closing of the convolutions, and Fig. 6 is a view of one ofthe spring-blanks as it comes from the coiling-machine.

Referring to the drawings, ct denotes the mill-rolls. b 1) indicatecoiling-machines,there being two of these machines only as a matter ofconvenience, so as to enable the winding of either right-hand orleft-hand coils. These coilers are located in advance of the rolls andin such juxtaposition thereto as to effect the coiling operation whilethe metal is still hot.

The coiling-machine has only one peculiarity of construction which it isnecessary here to describe-viz., the roller or guide which determinesand regulates the spacing or pitch of the windings is automaticallyshifted at intervals, so as to vary the pitch and close or nearly closethe convolutions, as will be described in detail farther on.

From the coiling-machine the coils pass in troughs or ways 0 0 onto aledge din front of a furnace e, preferably having an inclined floorf,down which they roll until they bring up at the lower end against a wallor other abutment g. In the side walls of the furnace opposite thislowest point there are openings, one of which leads to a trough and intothe other of which a pusher t enters for the purpose of thrusting thecoil that is in line with the openings out of the furnace into thetrough 72. As will be seen in Fig. 1, this trough has a transverseopening or passage through it about midway of its length, and into thispassage the rotary saw 8 of a metal-, sawing machine plays for thepurpose of cutting the coils as they pass along the trough from thefurnace on their way to the hardening-tank Z. The saw is driven by anelectric or other motor m and is arranged to be raised and lowered, soas to be projected at the proper time and at a suitable rate of speedinto the crosswise passage in the trough 7t. When the coils have beensevered by the saw, they are conducted along the trough and de liveredinto the oil-tank Z, where they are hardened in the usual way. They aresubsequently tempered and, if desired, japanned, all of which steps arenow well understood in spring-making.

Referring now particularly to Figs. 3, 4, and 5, the coiling machine hasthe usual grooved rolls 1 l and 2 2, which feed the rods or wire 19 intoit in the usual manner. These rolls are mounted on the ends of suitableshafts 3 3, that are intergeared and revolve in the direction of thearrows. In addition to these the machine is provided with rolls 4 and 5,which are also positively rotated and are located in advance of thefeed-rolls and serve to deflect and bend the rods or wire around the endof a mandrel which projects from the side of the machine at the pointindicated in Figs. 1 and 5. As the metal is fed into the machine andcoiled by these rolls it is acted on by a shunt-roller '7, whose axis isradial to the mandrel, and the position of this roller laterally withrespect to the others determines the pitch of the convolutions of thecoil. In order to adapt the machine to vary the pitch of theseconvolutions, as already described, this shunt-roller is arranged to bewithdrawn laterally, so as not to deflect the wire or rod as it is beingcoiled. It is carried on a stud 8, projecting from the end of a rod 9,that slides in suitable ways and is operated by a lever 10 from a cam 14on a shaft 12 in the lower part of the machine. This shaft may beoperated in any suitable way; but we show it herein as driven by a wormand gear 13. On the end of the shaft 12 there is a two-part eccentriccam 14, the parts of which are preferably adjustable with respect toeach other for the purpose of timing the movement of the lever 10 anddetermining its throw. This lever is pivoted at its upper end on a stud15, which is made adjustable by a screw-sleeve 16, and at its lower endit is bifurcated, so as to straddle the rod 9,and at its extremity itcarries a friction-roller 17 to run on the cam 14. As the rods or wirecome into the machine the winding proceeds in the usual way until thepredetermined length of coil has been completed, during all of whichtime the shunt-roller remains in fixed position, with the roller of thelever 10 traveling around the concentric part of the cam 14. When,however, the lowest part of the cam comes around, the lever 10, the rod9, and the shunt-roller all move inward, and the pressure being thustaken off the coil it begins to wind with the convolutions closed. Thisaction may be continued as long as desired;

but for the purposes of our invention it is more than one completerevolution of the coil, when the roller 17 passes onto the high part ofthe cam 14 again and the normal pitch of the coil is restored in amanner that will be understood from the previous description.

Such being the general construction and arrangement of an apparatus forcarrying out our improved method further description seems unnecessary,except, perhaps, to explain that only one of the coilers will be inoperation at one time, and that the points at which it is desired toclose the windings of the coil will be determined by the length andcharacter of the spring being made, and that the pusher will be timedand operated, so as to project a coil just the right distance from thefurnace to have the closed part stop in the plane of the saw.

One of the complete coils is illustrated in Fig. 6. On reference to thisfigure it will be seen that all the coils are of uniform open pitchexcept that in the center,where the convolution c is shown in contactwith the adjacent convolution on each side, this contact continuing forsomething more than one complete turn. The line a: :1; denotes the planeof cut of the saw, and it will be seen that it leaves the endconvolution cut with a fiat surface that is perpendicular to the axis ofthe coil.

We do not desire to be limited to the making of car-springs by theabovedescribed .method, as spiral coil-springs for any purpose may bemade in the same way. Neither do we desire to restrict ourselves tocutting the coils with a saw nor to heating the coils before cuttin Wehave described the invention as preferably carried out by taking therods or wire in full lengths from the mill-rolls and passing themdirectly to the coilers; but we do not desire to be limited to either ofthese steps; and as to the variation in the pitch of the convolutions orhelices of the coils, though we have described the closing of thewindings together until in contact, we should regard a substantialclosure as within our invention whether there was actual contact or not,for the cutting clear through the coils in the manner described wouldalways leave a surface perpendicular to their axis; but in order tosecure a square end for the coil, considered as a whole, it is necessarythat the coils should be substantially closed when the cut is made.Neither do we desire to be limited to cutting the coil at any particularpoint' in its length, as the end of a single coil could be squared oilin the same way instead of cuttingmidwayof the ends of adouble length ofcoil.

Having thus described our invention, what we claim is- 1. In the art ofmaking spiral coil-springs, the herein-described improvement consistingin winding a length of rod orwire into a continuous coil, diminishingthe pitch of the windings at predetermined points, and severing the coilat said points in a plane at right angles to its axis.

2. In the art of making spiral coil-springs, the herein-describedimprovement consisting in winding a length of rod or wire into a coil,with uniform open pitch for the main portion of its length, and withclosed pitch at the ends and squaring the ends by sawing it across in aplane at right angles to its axis at the points where the coils areclosed.

3. In the art of making spiral coil-springs, the herein-describedimprovement consisting in winding a length of rod or wire into acontinuous coil, diminishing the pitch of the windings at predeterminedpoints, and dividing the product into shorter lengths at said points bysevering the coil in a plane at right angles to its axis.

, 4. In the art of making spiral coil-springs, the herein-describedimprovement consisting in winding a length of rod or wire into acontinuous coil having a uniform pitch for a predetermined distance,continuing the winding for one or more turns with coils of diminishedpitch, restoring the original pitch of the coils without discontinuingthe winding, and severing it into shorter lengths and simulta-' neouslysquaring the ends of such lengths by sawing it across at the points ofdiminished pitch.

5. In the art of making spiral coil-springs, the herein-describedimprovement consisting in windinga length of rod or wire into acontinuous coil having a uniform open pitch for a predetermineddistance, contin uing the winding for one or more turns with the pitchdiminished so as to close the coils, restoring the original open pitchof the coils without discontinuing the winding, heating the coil, andsevering it while but into shorter lengths by sawing through it in aplane at right angles to its axis at the points where the coils areclosed.

In testimony whereof we affix our signatures in presence of twowitnesses.

FRED H. DANIELS. CLINTON S. MARSHALL. JOHAN O. E. TROTZ.

Witnesses:

W. H. Monsu, T-HOS. MAcDUFr.

